Why Can't I Keep Extra Pounds Off?

If your scale is stuck, if the weight you lose just bounces back, there’s a chance you’re making diet mistakes that won’t help you keep the pounds off. You can’t rely on fad diets like the grapefruit diet or the cabbage soup diet. Yes, when you cut your calories to less than 1000 a day the pounds will start to melt away, but your starving yourself and the day you go back on a normal diet, the pounds will come back. Why you ask, your training your metabolism to slow down, so when the diet is over you have a body that burns calories very slow and so when you start eating more the body can’t burn those extra calories and you put the weight back on but this time in the form of fat. When you lose the weight, your losing part muscle, part fat, about half and half, but when you gain it back it come back as fat. 

Say, for instance you lost 20 pounds and 10 pounds of that was muscle, then you gain the weight back and it come back as fat. You weight the same now as you did before the diet, but now you lost 10 pounds of muscle and exchanged it for 10 pounds of fat. Because you lost that muscle and have more fat your metabolism will burn less calories. Maintaining muscle actually burns more calories than maintaining fat. That’s one reason a thin person can eat more food and still keep their weight the same. They have less fat so they burn more calories than an overweight person.

Skipping breakfast is another big mistake for dieters. Breakfast will jumpstart your metabolism. At night the metabolism almost totally shuts down. That’s why these diet gurus always say “not to eat two hours before bed”.

At bedtime your metabolism slows down and that late-night dinner or snack won’t get metabolized and will end up as just more fat. Your body metabolizes food or burns calories to provide energy for the body to work. To give you the energy to think, to move, and for your heart and other organs to do their job. Your body has no way to store energy, it creates energy as it needs it. 

I often hear people talk about being sluggish in the morning but by mid-morning their up to speed. That’s mainly because they haven’t started their metabolism and the metabolism is still working in night-time mode, burning every few calories and providing very little energy. Those people will generally use a stimulant like coffee of tea and then run on nervous energy until they eat something. That’s not good for dieters. A dieter wants to eat some protein the first hour their out of bed. A.S.A.P. is best. The earlier you jump start the metabolism, (put it into high-gear) the more calories you’ll burn for the day and you’ll be more alert all morning. This can be extremely important for school kids, I was always falling asleep in my morning classes.

As proof this works, those people who eat a good breakfast don’t have any problem maintaining a healthy weight. Quantity of food is really not important, your breakfast might be non-fat greek yogurt and juice or coffee. It might be Oat Meal with berries, check out the internet for good choices. You don't have to eat a big breakfast.

Do you lose track of your snacks? Some calorie counters don’t remember to count the calories for all their snacks and drinks, so they’re actually consuming far more calories a day then they plan for. Bring snacks from home and even bring lunch. Use a small sling or back-pack and bring what ever you need for the day. Bring things like yogurt cups, fruit, nuts and seeds. Bring a sandwich from home that you made so you know what’s in it.  This is the best way to count calories. You only have to count one time. Count when you put the food and drinks in your back-pack. Get organized and it’s easy to diet. You might think this is a lot of trouble to good threw everyday but only when you first start. After a week of doing this you’ll find that your bring the same things over and over and you already know how much to pack and how many calories it will be. 

 It’s easy to stick to 1600 calories a day if you only eat the food you set aside for the day. Not organizing your food is another big mistake dieters make. They constantly lose track of calories until they finally throw-up their hands and quit. “This is just too hard”. Some people can never seem to get organized and that’s their downfall. They don’t try to get organized, for them it’s not important enough. Those are the same ones who never have time for exercise. 

Reasonable diets do work and they are absolutely essential for long term weight loss. If you are ready to slim down, take some time to evaluate your lifestyle, your support network and your health history to find a diet that works for you. You want to find a complete diet that gives you the nutrition you need. Call it whatever you want, just make sure that it is reasonable and sustainable for the long term.